PXI Express products handle 600MB/s data streaming

Engineers can use the newest National Instruments PXI products to sustain higher data streaming rates than ever before possible with an industry-standard test and measurement platform. The combination of these new PXI products, based on the PXI Express specification, include modular instruments, an embedded controller and RAID hard drive arrays, offers sustained hard drive recording and playback at 600 MBytes/s. With these new data streaming capabilities, engineers can achieve higher sustained acquisition and generation rates, reduce test times and meet new application challenges. Previous data streaming applications required dedicated, proprietary systems typically costing tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The new NI PXIe-5442 16-bit arbitrary waveform generator can stream from disk at the full rate of 100 MS/s (200MB/s) for generation of arbitrary waveforms up to several terabytes in length. Streaming from hard drives at the module's full rate reduces test times by eliminating the delay of uploading waveforms across slower instrument control buses. The NI PXIe-5442 module complements the company's existing NI PXIe-5122 100 MS/s, two-channel digitiser and NI PXIe-6536/7 25/50MHz, 32-channel digital I/O modules to provide a full IF/baseband and mixed-signal streaming module. Because PXI Express is compatible with all existing PXI modules, engineers can also use the new NI PXIe-5442 module with the NI PXI-5610 2.7GHz RF upconverter to stream the full 20MHz real-time bandwidth from disk for RF generation and playback applications in communications and military/aerospace.